GALA YM travelled to Penicuik for their 54th Annual Sevens.

And they came away with runners-up medals.

The group format saw the YM play Lismore in the first tie and after being 15-0 up at half-time Lismore came into the game a bit more in the second half but a further three second half tries saw them win 36-12.

Second opponents were local rivals Hawick Linden, who had defeated the YM comfortably at their own tournament three weeks previously.

An excellent performance in attack where the support play was outstanding against a well drilled Linden team created some superb tries led to a 17-5 win although this was only confirmed with a late breakaway try from Graham Dun.

This second win saw the squad progress to the main Cup semi-finals where they would take on the home team from Penicuik.

A low scoring match ensued with the YM racing into a 12-0 early lead.

However a breakaway try from Penicuik saw the teams swap ends with YM leading 12-7.

A second half full of incident saw some outstanding defensive work from the Gala team which meant the second half was scoreless and saw us progress to the Cup final.

The final was against the local Army outfit of 2 Scots, containing a large proportion of Fijian players.

A very physical tie which saw two of the Army receiving yellow cards during the tie and many who watched the final suggested there could have been more cards issued and possibly of a different colour.

The Army scored early in the tie and converted to lead 7-0 which remained the same throughout the tie until with the last play of the game the YM finally managed to cross the try line with Ben Gill scoring. Unfortunately he was unable to get close enough to the posts to make the conversion an easy one, and despite Ryan Patterson’s effort being on target it was agonisingly short and the final whistle blew to leave the YM two points short of extra time.